


Visionary

by Daymist (lsm510), lsm510



Category: Sentinels of the Multiverse (Card Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-13 17:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lsm510/pseuds/Daymist, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lsm510/pseuds/lsm510
Summary: Ranger Jane Brook is in a rut: travel through time, capture a bounty, repeat ad nauseam until the future is secure. That all changes when, after a seemingly routine mission, her time gate fails to activate leaving her trapped in Rook City. Will the Visionary help her return to the future or will his projections lead Jane to her death and ultimately the death of all reality!





	1. Alive and Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This is a NaNoWriMo project that is still in progress.

Outside the bunker, the wind howled like a passel of starved coyotes. No way Jane was sleeping though that, so she pushed her Stetson off her eyes, sat up, and addressed the ceiling. "Am I ever gonna grow old and die?"

Her questions sometimes got a response. It all depended on whether Con - the Con, a Con, Jane wasn't sure - decided an answer was worthwhile. Early in her stay at the bunker, she'd assumed no response meant the machine was preoccupied with something else. However, Con had since informed Jane that conversing with her took a trivial amount of processing power and hence had no impact on its multitude of other functions. It went on to explain that its responses depended on whether answering passed a cost-benefit analysis. Thus, Jane was surprised when she actually got a reply.

"Death is meaningless as time is static."

That was the other problem with questions. Con, despite assuring her its creators were human, had a distinctly nonhuman perspective. Getting a comprehensible answer sometimes took multiple slightly different iterations of the same question. "Will I end up what my people call dead?" Jane hoped the answer was ‘yes’. It was difficult to face spending eternity with only Con for company.

"Affirmative." Con paused long enough to make her think the conversation was over. "However, you may, in one place or another, encounter modifications that you feel prolong your current state."

"How long?" Her friends and family were all dead, hadn't been born yet, or were living their lives without her. Jane had been informed they were doing this simultaneously.

"You could perceive it as centuries. But only upon completion of your job. Prevent the formation of the Wasteland, smooth the pathway of time, and live as long as you wish.”

The Wasteland was Con’s obsession. It was, the computer said, an obscenity, a failure, a suboptimal endpoint continuously swallowing all better futures. Con expected Jane to fix this, expected her to traverse time to find and remove those entities causing unacceptable divots in the quantum fabric, divots that caused time to run foul. Jane didn’t understand this, but Con’s seeming omniscience had initially filled her with religious awe. Uncountable missions later, that zeal had faded, in part because Con steadfastly refused to adopt the winning personality Jane expected of her Lord and Savior. 

"You could talk to me just for fun sometimes," she said. "Friends do that." 

Con responded with a beep. Or rather Jane’s metal-clad right arm beeped meaning it was time to stop moping and go shoot something. She pressed the message button on her wrist and jumped when a cone of light appeared over her gleaming silver palm. Floating in the light was an image of a curled piece of paper with the word ‘BOUNTY’ in proper 1800s block script at the top. It was a new format for her mission briefing, one that stirred up memories - walking into Silver Gulch with her father, buying penny candy at the general store, and getting a shiver in her gut looking at pictures of banditos posted on the wall. Her eyes prickled. She wiped them and waited for her voice to steady. "You didn't have to do that."

"I want you to be happy, Ranger Brooks." Con's voice was soft and oddly gentle.

Jane reckoned having work, and good work - seeing how she was saving the universe and all - was the definition of happiness, so she smiled. It felt good to exercise her cheeks. She turned her attention to the bounty. The image in the middle was grainy, more static than anything. She shook her arm, then shot a guilty look at the ceiling. Con had just given her a present. Wouldn't due to hurt its feelings. And at any rate, the text at the bottom identified what she'd be hunting. "Murderous Marionette," Jane read, "last seen at Pike Industrial Complex, Rook City, 1997. A puppet?"

"Do not underestimate it. Its nose is fully weaponized. Also, a normal bullet will make a hole in the marionette, with little effect. " A metal arm unfolded from the wall and deposited a velvet box on her bed. It held twelve gleaming copper cylinders.

"Nothing a gal loves more than jewelry," Jane said.

"Correction. They are incendiary rounds." Con wasn’t programmed to process metaphors.

Jane reached for her upgraded twin Colt Army pistols. They didn't need a cap, never jammed, and spat out bullets faster and farther than any pistol should. Her guns felt like aliens wearing the faces of old friends, but they kept her alive, even if that wasn’t always something she wanted. After loading the bullets, Jane shrugged out of her union suit, pulled on her working duds, and assembled a pack. Her jobs usually took less than a subjective hour, but some had extended to a day or two. It was best to bring a canteen and some grub. She considered bringing more fire power - lasers, tasers, masers, grenades? She loved the temporal grenades. They were beautiful ridged spheres of iridescent metal, their priming buttons chased with ever changing geometric designs. Not even Con knew where they came from and the stockpile was limited. Wasteful on a puppet perhaps, but she tucked one into her bandolier, then two more. Con’s sudden interest in her happiness had left her on edge.

Loaded for bear, she clumped down the main entrance hall. Ahead of her, the bunker's massive steel door slid up. Jane could see but not feel the sandstorm raging outside. The soap-bubble thin film of the nascent time gate filled the entrance and shut out that reality. The film stabilized and her destination slowly coalesced. She was looking down on an immense city palely lit by an orange halogen sky. The viewpoint moved, swooping like a bird over soot-blackened office buildings and crowded tenements to descend through crisscrossing tangles of wires and slip into a trench carved out by a brown oil-streaked river. The water flickered by, sporadically shadowed by the skeletal lines of bridges. The banks flattened and sprouted cement block buildings and attendant smoke stacks, until the view-point spiraled in on a factory complex isolated on a large peninsular mudflat. The mouth of the time gate leaped the factory's two razor-topped boundary fences and plunged through a narrow window. The interior of its chosen building was cavernous and full of dim hulking shapes. Jane adjusted her hat and stepped through.

*********************************************

The gate had provided visuals, but hadn't prepared her for the smell. Jane gagged and pulled up her bandanna to block out the chemical stink. The rest of her senses felt comparatively muted. She could hear the faint hum of machinery and closer the sound of liquid moving. She traced the gurgling to a nearby pipe. It radiated heat, apparently in an effort to keep up with the rest of the machinery. Jane felt the sweat rise under the band of her hat. With any luck, she'd bag her quarry before getting cooked, but right now her only company was shadows and the smell.

Lacking a better guide, she followed the pipe, squeezing between the hot metal walls of vats and storage silos. She was cautious but stumbled when her boot came down on something soft and uneven. An arm maybe? It had rolled under her in a way that suggested flesh and bone. She’d stepped over enough of it. She risked activating her palm light and saw the body of a man. He looked young, mid-twenties maybe, but his glassy eyes and chest full of holes made it clear he wasn’t getting any older. He had a clip-on badge gracing the lapel of his city-slicker suit. She read it, pocketed the badge, and said some respectful words over ‘Mr. Vincent Long – Visitor’. She skipped the 'Amens', however, in favor of muttering, "You couldn't get me here sooner?" Con would hear that through the intervening millennia, but Jane couldn't hear back. The reply, likely some babble about high and low energy space-time access points wouldn't help her any. However, the small bloody footprints leading away from the body were a definite help. She drew a gun and started tracking.

The prints led into a forest of pipes where her pack kept catching on gauges and screw-valves. She couldn’t afford to drop it. It would be a devil to find and no telling what might get into it. She unslung the pack and pushed it ahead of her. Following a final sweaty squeeze, she and her bag burst out onto a floor-level access track that extended along one wall of the building. She could hear footsteps now, pattering above her, and caught a glimpse of a small silhouette bobbing along a catwalk. She dropped her bag, reached up thirty feet with her metal arm, grabbed the walkway, and pulled herself up.

“Reach for the sky stick boy!” Jane fired a warning shot. Didn’t matter what monster she was hunting; they always got a warning shot. Her bullet burst, spraying flame through the metal mesh of the walk. In the glare she could see the puppet. Its maker, if it had one, hadn’t done a good job approximating a person. Its stick legs were mismatched and its arms too long, but the thing was fast. It swarmed up a ladder and vanished onto the next landing before she could get off another shot. It giggled as it went.

She ran for the ladder, tracking on the puppet by its laughter and footsteps. She fired, not expecting a clean hit but hoping the incendiary spray would set the thing ablaze. The fire briefly lit up the rafters of the factory, flashing off dirty windows, gantries, and chains. The light winked out. Jane listened. There was no more giggling or footsteps for her to follow, so she climbed the ladder slow and cautious like.

Her meat hand was on the top rung when a small painted face appeared over the opening. She had enough time to register a monocle and a blood-spattered grin before its nose extended and opened fire. She dropped and rolled away from the ladder. The puppet scampered to stay above her. It went prone, pushed its nose through the mesh of the upper landing, and resumed firing.

Jane scrambled back, teetered on the edge, and fell. Hitting the ground knocked the breath out of her but did little else. It wasn’t just her arm and her guns that Con had modified. She shook the ringing out of her ears as she backed away and returned fire. Her incendiary rounds cast moving shadows of the puppet as it ran, and climbed, and ran.

It was four stories up now, and its laughter sounded ragged but stationary. Would a puppet need to stop to catch its breath? Didn't matter. Jane lined up a shot, but before she could squeeze the trigger, the giggling was drowned out by the sound of metal gears grinding above and behind her. There was motion up there, chains uncoiling, something flat and round swinging towards her. The round thing hummed, and Jane felt the gun in her left hand try to leap free. Seconds later, her right arm jerked towards the ceiling. The humming and the pressure deepened. Her drawn gun slid out of her sweaty flesh fingers and flew up. Jane was straining against the force on her arm now, she could feel her toes leaving the floor, hear the steel walkways groaning. Then she flew, her metal arm slammed into the disc and stuck, leaving her dangling.

The disc moved, whisking her with it, and slowly came to rest over the mouth of the nearest vat. Jane grabbed for a grenade with her free hand and pressed the priming button. Seconds later the disc stopped humming, and she fell, ten feet, twenty feet. Her hand tingled when the grenade went off in her fist. It wasn't an explosion of force and fire, it was an explosion of stillness. It bloomed into a sphere of eerie blue light that caught and twisted time. Her fall stopped. In the light, bubbles froze mid-pop on the surface of the liquid in the vat. Her gun was left hanging in the air. She grabbed it, extended her bionic arm outside the sphere, and pulled herself back onto the walkway, back into time. 

The temporal trap hung behind her, suppressing change in everything it touched. That included the lift plate but not the puppet. Her quarry, still above her, was lit by the reflected blue glow. It was pounding its small fists on a control panel, trying to force the lift to move. Jane fired. Her bullet burst and set the creature alight. 

The grenade winked out behind her, but the flames made the puppet an easy target. She fired one more bullet, turning the creature into a running ball of fire. Alarms sounded, accompanied by a grinding of metal plates. On the factory floor, vat lid panels were closing. Water sprayed down from the sprinklers to rise again as steam pluming up from the hot pipes. 

She rushed down to retrieve her bag, slung it over a shoulder, then paused to look up, worried the sprinklers might save her target. She was relieved when the puppet collapsed and sent a shower of embers down through the mesh. Her bounty was gone and that was the signal for her badge to begin the automated extraction sequence. She was already reviewing the fight in her head, thinking about what to say to Con. Could we have saved Mr. Long? Did I misuse the grenade? Why was this thing a target? Do you really want me to be happy?

She was still standing there several seconds later when the room lights came on. “Con?” she whispered and tapped the star-shaped pin on her chest. Nothing happened. She could hear shouts. People calling out about gun shots and fire. She tapped the badge again; it didn't so much as fizz. She'd gotten the bounty. There should be a gate. Her badge always gave her a gate. "Con!" she shouted. “I got it! Did you see me get it?” Nothing. She wasn’t supposed to talk to bystanders let alone shoot them. She ran for the ladder. 

On the fifth-floor landing, she smashed one of the narrow windows and used her telescoping arm to lower herself. That only went so far, and she had to drop the remaining distance and shake off another fall. Search lights from guard towers flanking the main entrance lit the yard, so she ran towards the river, trying to shelter between buildings. She reached the inner fence and ripped a hole in it with carbide-tipped fingers. It wasn't fast or quiet. She was working on the second fence when gunfire started up behind her. She dropped and ripped at the bottom of the chain-link, feeling like a dog trying to dig its way through. The men behind her had automatics, so it was only the distance and darkness that kept her from getting perforated, and as for the distance, that was dwindling fast.

They were screaming at her to stop, to drop her weapons, to put her hands on her head. She pulled on the fence, thinking to rip a section out of the ground. The metal twisted, bowed up, gave her enough space to crawl through. She sprinted for the river, trying to keep her breathing shallow. She could still taste the chemicals in the air, but they were joined by a new reek. The water smelt like rotting fish. Regardless, she plunged in and swam downstream.


	2. Whips and Chains

"The floor recognizes Congressman Long of Ward 45 for the introduction of RC4457, the bill titled ‘To establish a government program to support the health of the indigent by providing access to free clinics and drug counseling services.’ before the Public Safety and Health committee." 

Podrick Langston wasn't what Vincent hoped for in a herald. The speaker of the Rook City Council was short, round, and favored plaid suits with striped ties. Still, Vincent descended the steps like a gladiator walking into the ring. For Vincent, the Congressional Rotunda was a colosseum writ small with ranks of polished wooden benches circling an ellipse of green carpet. He knew his bill would be unpopular, particularly with the fiscal conservatives; however, for the benefit of the city, Vincent would defeat those misguided fools and strike a decisive blow against the organizations that pulled their strings.

He arrived at the podium in the center of the green field and looked up. The Congressional Rotunda had room for all fifty members of the Council, but Vincent saw mostly empty space. It was made worse by the fact that the six other members of the committee refused to sit next to each other. Vincent's friend and mentor Matt gave him a thumbs up while Vincent adjusted the microphone. 

He cleared his throat. "Gentlemen and Gentleladies, I bring to your attention bill RC4457." He repeated its title, as required by council protocol, then launched into the bill's particulars, i.e., his plan to establish a medical support network for victims of what he called the 'pharmaceutical scourge' and his plan to fund the network by raising taxes on industries responsible for flooding the market with deregulated products. Vincent rushed this part of his talk. He knew that the subcommittee members had copies of the bill in front of them, available to read even if they likely wouldn't. Also, he was anxious to get to his finale. When he got there, he stood up straighter and deepened his voice.

"Our industries, once the core of a prosperous city, have made it a wasteland. We are slaves and they our masters, ruling over us with the whip of the economy and the chains of drugs and crime. It is time for the civic leaders of Rook City to stand up and say, ‘No more. No more will we allow you to profit from the misery of the poor, the ill, the addicted.’ We must repeal the regulatory releases on both traditional pharmaceutical and now bioelectroceutical products, tighten regulations on advertising, and prosecute doctors who accept kickbacks from commercial interests. Furthermore, our industries must accept the financial burden of caring for those citizens whose lives and fortunes they have ruined. Finally, we must reopen investigations on the links between our pharmaceutical industries and illicit drug sales in our city. The citizens of my ward have spoken, have cried out for help fighting the criminals that have infiltrated our city's businesses and which are now profiting from the release of untested and hazardous products onto the streets. We must establish a new non-partisan congressional committee to evaluate and eradicate these criminal links." His final words echoed off the domed ceiling and then it fell silent. Vincent's ivory silk shirt was soaked with sweat. He was glad his suit jacket covered up the stains.

"Is the congressman aware that many of his constituents work for said industries? That Pike and...." 

Podrick interrupted Congresswoman Jones' rebuttal. "Speakers must be recognized before making remarks. This session is adjoined. Debate is scheduled for a later sitting." Podrick gaveled, the committee members stood up and clumped into a few murmuring groups.

Ruth Jones swept down the stairs. Vincent braced himself for her arrival.

"Are you crazy?" Her question boomed through the podium's still live microphone. Vincent made sure to step away before responding.

"Do you realize the industries in this city have the lowest tax rates and the least amount of regulation on the Eastern sea board? Have you seen the statistics on addiction? They're killing us."

"Pike Industries is the only thing keeping this city alive," she snapped. "And the comments at the end of your speech? About a new congressional committee on crime? That wasn't even in the draft of the bill. Did you make it up while you were speaking?" She waved her copy in his face.

Vincent hadn't expected anyone to read his bill. "We can add it. We should add it."

"This is a health-care bill. You have no business tacking on a rider about crime. Also, the industries have already been investigated and have no criminal links. The new devices are being made in someone's basement or getting imported across the border. You want to fix the E.N.E. problem, think about blocking immigration."

"Perhaps the links weren't found because the man responsible for enforcing legislation didn't want them to be found?"

Ruth stepped back and pursed her collagen-injected lips. "Now you're accusing the mayor of obstruction? You are crazy. And this bill is getting killed in committee. Good day, Congressman Long." She wheeled around on her three-inch heels and stomped out of the chamber. 

******  
"So what did you think?" Vincent was smiling, so drunk on adrenaline that he didn't notice Matt's deep frown lines.

"The whole whips and chains thing was a little overblown. We're just trying to put up some clinics. And you didn't talk to me about that investigation nonsense. Next time, show me your speech before you shoot down our chances."

"I think we should reopen the investigations on Pike."

"Yeah. I got that," Matt said.

"You know the mayor is owned by Pike. We just need the right evidence to get rid of him. Isn't that better than putting up a few underfunded clinics?"

"Pike has a stable of ivy-league lawyers and what've we got? Some scruffy Rook University J.D.s."

Vincent clenched his fists and took a breath, but Matt cut him off.

"Oh, wait, that's your degree isn't it?" Matt rolled his eyes. "Guess we need to work with what we got, even if what we got can't stick to the script. Now, since you opened your mouth, we're going to need to make some big cuts to finesse this bill through committee, and there's no telling what'll happen if it goes to a full council vote."

Vincent visibly deflated. Matt was 35 to Vince's 23 years old, and Vince had always looked up to him, relied on his approval. Matt, in turn, had taken Vince under his wing and guided him through his first year in Congress.

"We're going to rewrite it and redistribute it this evening," Matt continued. "We'll only raise rates on companies that don't comply with the new regulatory guidelines."

"Raising rates across the board was going to recoup money for the damages already done! And you know they'll all cook the books, so it looks like they’re in compliance."

"It's called politics, Vince."

Matt was probably right. He usually was. Vincent still argued and fretted over every change as the evening wore on. After all, his congressional campaign slogan had been a heart-felt if average promise of "A Prosperous Future for Ward 45". However, Vincent had come to realize that if there was going to be any real change, he'd have to set his sights a little higher. Matt wanted politics, and Vincent was damn well gonna give it to him.

"I'm going to run for Mayor," Vincent said. 

Matt made a choking sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh. "Rus has won the last eight elections. Why waste your time?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Vincent said. "Rook City needs me."

****

It was ten when Vincent finally left his office. He took the stairs and walked out onto the grey marble floor of the main lobby. He looked up, hoping for some inspiration after his talk with Matt. Statues of Justice and Victory were up there, standing guard over the entrance to the City Hall Rotunda, but he could only see their legs. Half the light bulbs in the chandelier were broken. He tried not to take it personally. 

When he got further into the lobby, he could hear voices, two people chatting near the main entrance. He recognized Congresswoman Jone's buttery alto and the somewhat garbled bass reply, garbled because it came out around a fat unlit cigar. Mayor Rus Overbrook was ostensibly trying to quit smoking.

Vincent studied the inadequate chandelier and waited for them to finish. If he walked past, he'd have to wish them an insincere good evening or worse deal with a lecture on economics from Ruth. He opted to wait and listen. Ruth said something about money and Pike. Vincent edged a little closer, heard the words 'scientist' and 'program', and then, unfortunately, the mayor waved at him.

"Vincent, my lad," Rus said. Every congressman and woman had been 'ladded' at some point. The mayor claimed his indiscriminate use of the term demonstrated how progressive he was on gender issues. "Ruth says you did some nice work on that bill."

It was difficult to tell who looked more surprised, Ruth or Vincent. Vincent recovered first and said a weak thank-you.

"Benevolent." The mayor chewed thoughtfully on his cigar. "Truly benevolent. And you are completely correct about drug crime in this city, if a little confused about where it comes from. In fact, seeing as how the streets are getting increasingly unsafe, would you care to walk Ms. Jones to her car?"

Vincent didn't care to, but also didn't care to look like a lout. Fortunately, the enraged look on Ruth's face made it easier for him to say "Yes."

"Forsooth!" the mayor said. "Chivalry is not dead. Off with you then. And be safe." Rus turned and walked towards the stairwell, his oxfords squeaking on the marble. 

"He's working late?" Vincent asked. He hadn't meant it to be a question, but he was used to civil servants clearing out of the building at 5:00 pm.

Ruth ignored him and pushed the door. It was a heavy oak affair and tended to stick. She had to put her shoulder to it to pop it open. Vincent followed her outside and down the steps.

"Nice of the old tub to ask whether I actually wanted a chaperone." Ruth's heels clicked on the sidewalk. 

"Where are you parked?"

She sighed. "Public lot at Darrow and Clive."

Poor luck. Vincent was also parked there. He fell in beside Ruth and the two of them walked until the silence became oppressive. Vincent simply had to say something. Defending his stance was tantamount to justifying his existence.

"Do you oppose saving lives?" 

Ruth laughed. It was a surprisingly dry sound coming from the woman's inflated lips. "You think you're going to do that? I don't."

"Why?" Vincent couldn't understand someone opposing this. It was so obviously necessary and, as the mayor had said, pure benevolence. Although, there had been an underlying thread of sarcasm in Rus's voice.

"Because you want to throw money away on people who don't want help. I represent the people of my ward. They work hard, raise families, rely on pharma jobs. I can improve THEIR lives."

"By letting their kids die on the street?" Vincent was yelling now. He couldn't help it. He'd seen it, seen his best friend go down that route and held the man when he died, his brain literally fried on one of the new eenies. Vincent could still see his friend's eyes rolled back in his head, the froth on his mouth. It drove him into politics. He never would have done this otherwise. It sucked: the slowness, the compromises, the eternal brown nosing. He took a deep breath, trying to get his heart-rate down. Matt would have ordered him to stay cool. Vince wasn't sure how his mentor managed that, seeing as how it was his younger brother who'd died in Vincent's lap. Even the wind couldn't help with the cooling process. Clive Street funneled it straight from the river and it was tainted with the smell of Pike effluent, a daily reminder of the people responsible for his city's misery. Ruth seemed immune to the wind. It took a homeless man to get the Congresswoman to flinch and change course. Vincent followed Ruth across the street.

"Can't look can you?" Vincent said bitterly. The man had been painfully thin and had nothing but a piece of cardboard to keep him off the concrete. "Needed to get away."

"I didn't see you stopping." 

Vincent felt his face flush again. He was glad it was dark. He turned and strode back across the street. "I'm stopping now. I'm stopping all of this now."

"You self-righteous prick! I hope he claws your eyes out." Ruth stayed on the opposite side of the street.  
She was actually right to be cautious. The street drugs in Rook City had highly unpredictable effects, but this man was just asleep. No patch on the back of his neck. No needle tracks. No ambulance to call. The most dramatic gesture Vincent could make was to drape the sleeping man with his suit jacket. 

He was tucking a tenner in the man's pocket when Ruth screamed. He turned, saw Ruth draw a gun, and aim it at the mouth of an alley. Something flicked out, a fast blur of movement, and the gun clattered away. Ruth curled over, her scream ratcheting up into a cry of pain. 

Vincent took two steps towards her and stopped. There was something large and dark moving in the alley. He heard a snort and hooves clattering on stone. The shape hurtled towards Ruth, and the woman dodged, falling just in time to miss another lashing. The creature whinnied in frustration and shook the broken chain around its neck. It was a horse, or at least horse-shaped. It was covered in coarse black hair that seemed to suck in the light; light it didn't need since it had no eyes. There was also no mouth, just a membrane of skin that pulsed in and out, leaving a pair of gaping nostrils to do all the work of breathing. And, as a crowning oddity, the horse had a long cable springing from its forehead. This appendage was shiny, segmented like a millipede, and sickeningly flexible. He watched it wave sinuously through the air, dip to the ground, and wiggle towards Ruth.

Vincent stopped gaping and edged towards the gun. The thing clearly couldn't see, but its hearing was fine. It turned towards him. Its nose made wet snuffling noises, and its oral membrane pulsed in and out. Then it seemed to lose interest in him. The tentacle inched closer to Ruth, and she couldn't stay still any longer. She crabbed away from it, tried getting to her feet, and fell when the cord whipped around her ankles and pulled her up into the air. Her purse went flying. She was dangling now, and screaming again since there was no longer any point in being quiet. The thing played her like a fish on a line, swinging her up to hang over its large pointed ears. It tilted its head up and snuffled again.

"What are you going to do, eat her?" Vincent shouted, although it might not have been wise to taunt the thing about its lack of a mouth. It likely had some way of gaining nutrients. Maybe it sucked the juice out of its prey through its forehead proboscis? He didn't want to find out, so he leveled the gun at the monster and fired. He'd never handled a gun in his life and was unprepared for its kick. The bullet went high, whizzing past Ruth. 

"Don't shoot. Cops! Call," she screamed. She was thrashing in the air, trying to reach a pocket. Her phone fell, bounced off the thing's head, and clattered to the ground.

Vincent held the gun firmly and fired again. He hit, but the thing did little more than flinch and snort at the impact. Phlegm spattered from its nostrils. Ruth was still trying to pike up and grab something. The woman's politics were reprehensible, but he couldn't fault her grit. Vincent emptied the clip into the monster. The bullets made depressions in its flesh, but no liquid emerged. It snarled at him and started backing towards the alley. Vincent couldn't let it take Ruth. He dropped the gun, ran at it, shouting and waving his arms, hoping it would let her go and chase the noise. 

Ruth had managed to grab her keys, and was using them like a flail. She didn't hit the thing, but her grip accidentally set off her car alarm. A strident horn sounded, and the lights on her SUV in the public lot strobed. The horse bucked, Ruth slewed through the air as the whip pulled back and came forward, flinging the woman at the ground. She crashed to the sidewalk, impacting the curb with a sickening crunch. The keys bounced out of her hand, and it was suddenly quiet.

The horse cocked its head and turned towards Ruth. It was now no longer curious. It simply lashed everything, the street, the curb, the sidewalk. Ruth wailed when she took a strike across her chest. Vincent pressed the button on his own keys. The considerably more apologetic sound of his Honda beeped out. It was enough. The horse lost its orientation. It reared and plunged erratically. Vince ran forward and yanked Ruth out of range of the thing's hooves. She was heavy, muscular, and thick-waisted, but he had to keep one hand on his keys. He pulled her by her shirt collar ignoring the unnatural looseness of her left hip and leg. Her heels dragged on the street all the way to the car park. He pushed her into his Civic, ran around and climbed into the driver side. Through the windscreen, he saw the monster gallop away towards City Hall. It crashed through a mail box and off lamp poles as it went. Vincent checked the congresswoman's pulse. It was steady. He dialed 911. By the time they arrived, the monster was gone and his thumb was numb from pressing his key fob.


End file.
